mperament in many things her opposites. Our taste in art seems to
turn resolutely away from her. For each hundred of French and score of
German pictures that comes to us, how many come from England? What can
one who has not crossed the sea learn of English pictures from our
private collections and picture-dealers' shops? Was not all we knew
prior to the Exhibition of 1876 gleaned from _Vernon Gallery_ plates and
Turner's _Rogers_ or _Rivers of France_? But while our dealers and
students and millionaires throng the studios of Paris and Munich, and
our eyes are being daily educated to demand above all things
_technique_, our brains are constantly being worked upon by a stream of
art-literature from England. Taste pulls us one way--identity of English
speech, with consequent openness to English ideas, pulls us the other.
Pictures preach one thing, books another. Our boy who has worked in
Paris comes home to try to realize Ruskin. Both influences are too new,
and our art is as yet too unsteady, for any one to guess as to the
ultimate result. One thing only can be unreservedly inculcated: Let us
shun self-analyzation, self-consciousness, morbidness, affectation,
attitudinizing. Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our
eyes on our brushes and on the world of beauty around us. One thing
only can with safety be predicted: If we are, or are to be, a people of
artists, creative or appreciative as the case may be, we shall learn
whatever of technique the world has to teach us, and shall improve upon
it, and we shall perhaps digest the small measure of theory for which we
have appetites left. But if we are _not_ artists, actual or future,
technique will be impossible, and will seem undesirable. We shall
greedily fill our stomachs with the wind of art-philosophy, shall work
with the reason instead of with the eye and the fingers, shall symbolize
our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and
fondly dream we are painting pictures. Or we shall copy with a hopeless
effort after literalness the first face or weed we meet, and call the
imperfect, mechanical result a work of art.

M. G. VAN RENSSELAER.

THREE WATCHES

I sat in the silence, in moonlight that gathered and glowed
Far over the field and the forest with tender increase:
The low, rushing winds in the trees were like waters that flowed
From sources of passionate joy to an ocean of peace.
And I watched, and was glad in